Chapter Text
“Hey, Phantom?”
Danny hummed and turned towards a floating Robin. The new ghost had become Danny’s genuine friend in the few months they’d known each other—he was younger than Danny, but friendly ghosts were hard to come by, especially with Danny’s Ghost King title hanging over most of his ghostly relationships, and not to mention his history with many of them as rogues in Amity Park years ago. And bonding with a teen vigilante, as a former one himself, wasn’t a hardship at all anyways.
Robin looked nervous, but Danny couldn’t begin to guess why. They floated sedately through the Ghost Zone in the general direction of Phantom’s Keep, both tired from subduing Aragon in his dragon form once again—Danny had been alerted by Dora that the ghost had reclaimed his amulet and planned to slip through Vlad’s portal into the living realm.
When Robin didn’t continue speaking, Danny pulled up short. “Is something wrong, Robin? Did Aragon hurt you?”
Robin shook his head quickly, “No, I’m fine.” He smirked. “That sucker didn’t know what hit him with both of us there!”
Danny laughed. Aragon had expected Danny, certainly, but Robin was a sneaky little thing, able to snatch the amulet right off the dragon’s neck after only a few distracting ectoblasts from Danny. He knew some of the ghosts had been chattering about Robin latching onto Danny’s side lately, but apparently it hadn’t reached the prince yet.
Danny had first come across Robin in the Ghost Zone when Ghost Writer reached out to him. After becoming the Ghost King a few years ago, Danny began spending an increasing amount of time in the Zone, though he would return to Amity to keep in touch with Sam, Tucker and Jazz when they came to visit. They had moved across the country first for college and then their careers, but returned regularly to see their families and Danny, who had attended the local community college and sat through lessons from Clockwork and the Observants about his future kingly duties.
Said duties included hearing petitions from ghosts and to help settle extreme squabbles—ghosts loved to fight, but sometimes when their obsessions grew out of control or threatened to evolve into an escape to the living realm, where Danny tended to step in like with Aragon, whether he was approached to do so or not.
Ghost Writer indeed had a complaint, but also had been concerned. He reported a young new ghost that had found his way—or snuck his way?—into Ghost Writer’s private library and refused to leave. At first Ghost Writer had been livid at the invasion of privacy and panicked about the wellbeing of his precious books, but the new ghost luckily respected the books far more than he seemed to respect Ghost Writer himself.
Danny met the new ghost Robin and immediately recognized the boy’s colorful vigilante getup. His heart sank at the sight of the poor ghost teen––he had heard of Gotham’s Batman and Robin, but not of his young sidekick’s death, and grief washed over him when Robin looked up at Danny from the first edition copy of Wuthering Heights in his hands. The teen vigilante’s visible confusion likely came from feeling secondhand the sudden grief vibrating out from Danny’s core.
That day Danny had managed to negotiate permission for Robin to occasionally visit Ghost Writer’s library, but he also managed to somehow acquire the teen as a little ghost duckling. Soon after leaving Ghost Writer’s haunt Danny had been called to deal with Shadow breaking Johnny out of Walker’s prison, and the ghost-shade’s bad luck had set free Technus, Skulker, and a few others at the same time. Robin insisted on following, and was actually a welcome helping hand in rounding up the escapees, though he taunted Walker even more than Danny usually did and had to be dragged away before becoming imprisoned himself.
Robin never talked about how he died and Danny never asked. Danny showed him the ropes of dealing with ghostly powers, kept him out of trouble, and became his friend instead, hoping that would be enough. He knew what it was like to die young, and had the support of his best friends to get him through it all—Danny wanted to return the favor.
“Then what’s up, kid?” Danny asked.
Robin scowled. “Don’t call me kid. You may be the Ghost King but I know you’re not that old! You’re, like, the same age as my…” he trailed off, then seemed to steel himself. “I wanted to tell you something.”
Danny blinked at the sudden redirection. “Okay, hit me. I can take it,” he teased. Robin scoffed and faked a gut punch at Danny, who mimed the pain of an impact with a laugh.
Artwork by suzukiblu
“You’re an idiot,” Robin rolled his eyes, but then the mirth faded a bit and Danny hovered closer in concern. “I was just thinking… I want to tell you my name. My real one.”
Oh. “Are you sure?” Danny asked. “You know you don’t have to—”
“I know,” Robin interrupted. “I want to. I’m dead, Phantom,” he deadpanned, which made Danny suppress a wince, “and you know the saying—dead men tell no tales.” Danny groaned, and Robin grinned. “I trust you, though. Really.”
Danny couldn’t help but pull him in for a hug. He had done so before after a few of the more dangerous tussles they had gotten into with some of the other ghosts, and each time Robin melted into the embrace. “I’d be honored, Robin. In fact,” Danny took the young ghost by the shoulders and smiled, “let’s introduce ourselves again properly. Hello,” Danny shook Robin’s hand enthusiastically. “The name’s Danny Phantom, or Danny Fenton in the living realm, Ghost King of the Infinite Realms.”
Robin rolled his eyes again but squeezed Danny’s hand. “Nice to meet you, you goof. And I’m Robin, former…” he swallowed hard, “former partner of Batman, and, um…” He looked directly at Danny and used his other hand to gently pull off his domino mask, which faded from existence. “Jason Todd-Wayne, in the–in the living realm.”
“Nice to meet you, Jason,” Danny responded softly. Hearing his name seemed to cue something in Jason to relax, his shoulders lowering a bit and his cape fluttered as if there was a breeze.
“Cool, great,” Jason said, “Let’s go ba—ugh,” he suddenly groaned, his hand clutching at his chest as he hunched over.
Danny rushed closer. “Jason! What’s wrong?”
“I don’t—fuck,” he swore—not uncommon from the kid, but it sounded pained. Danny started to panic. Equally panicked eyes met his, but before Danny could ask anything else, those eyes rolled backwards before fluttering closed.
“Jason!” Danny caught the boy, inexplicably falling downwards even without any gravity to enforce it. The boy was easy to gather in his arms, but his body was limp, entirely unconscious. “Jason, wake up!” Danny begged as he took off through the Zone as fast as he could, no longer flying in the direction of his Keep. There was only one ghost he could think of that might be able to help.
✦✦✦
“Great One,” Frostbite intoned, and Danny leapt up. Jason had been in the other room being examined for the past hour, and he had worked himself up imagining the worst. Danny couldn’t imagine what was wrong—they had just been floating through the Zone, Aragon hadn’t even gotten a single hit in on Jason before he changed back from his dragon form, and they’d only been talking, he didn’t know—
“Great One,” Frostbite repeated, sounding concerned, and Danny forced himself to stop spiraling, if just for a moment.
“Is he okay? What happened? What’s wrong with him?”
Frostbite frowned. “It appears there is something affecting Robin’s core.”
“He grabbed his chest before he passed out,” Danny worried, thinking back, and Frostbite nodded.
“I am not surprised. Please follow me, Great One.” Frostbite led Danny into Jason’s room, which was one of the warm ones Frostbite and his people had eagerly made on behalf of Phantom before he had even become Ghost King, on the off chance that any of Danny’s friends needed ghostly medical advice—Jazz in particular had become quite liminal before she left town for college.
Jason lay completely still, which didn’t sit right with Danny. Robin was hardly ever still, unless he was absorbed in one of Ghost Writer’s many books, and even then his face would change expressions as he read and his hand would flip the pages. His eyes were closed but not in sleep—his face was too slack for that. Frostbite offered a seat at the ghost’s bedside which Danny took, immediately grasping Jason’s hand.
“Is his core hurt? Cracked?” Danny asked, not looking away from Jason.
“No, Great One, it does not appear so. Rather, I must admit his condition is one I have never seen before. His core appears to be… flickering.”
“Flickering?”
“In and out of existence, Great One.” Danny looked at Frostbite in alarm. “Indeed—it is worrying. If his core was simply becoming intangible, our instruments would be able to still detect its presence, but it seems to be vanishing completely, but at such a rapid speed it is hardly detectable. It is why you can still feel him solidly right now, and see him as well.”
Danny gripped the boy’s fingers even tighter but there was no physical response. “He looks like he’s in a coma,” Danny observed, and Frostbite agreed.
“Yes. His core’s fluctuations seem to mainly affect his consciousness, Great One, and it is similar to a coma for someone living. As you know, a ghost’s core takes on the functions of multiple living beings’ organs, including the brain.”
Danny looked at Frostbite once more, a few tears escaping his watering eyes. The young ghost had already died far too soon in life; he didn’t deserve something like this even in death. “Will he wake up?” he asked pleadingly, a bit of power leaking into his voice from the strength of Danny’s will for a positive response.
Unfortunately, Frostbite sighed. “We can only have hope, my King.”
Hours passed, then days, then a week. Danny remained in the Far Frozen beside Jason, holding the boy’s pale and unresponsive hand. The yetis took care of them both, and word spread through the Zone when the ghosts began to notice their King’s absence.
Dora came by, worried that Robin had been injured by her brother. An Observant or two popped in to complain about Danny’s shirking of his duties, which went ignored. Kitty visited, saying Johnny and Shadow didn’t want to risk the latter’s bad luck but missed seeing them both—Jason had been so enthusiastic at the sight of Johnny’s bike and instantly clicked with the other ghost when they started discussing its specs. Even Ghost Writer visited to share a book from his collection about comas that Danny couldn’t bring himself to read.
Clockwork floated into the room once but refused to answer any of Danny’s questions, neither confirming nor denying anything about Jason’s fate.
It was on the seventh day something happened that would change everything, and Clockwork smiled to himself from his Tower as he observed the timelines.
At first it was just a twitch, but Danny couldn’t miss it, not with Jason’s hand held firmly in his. But then the equipment monitoring Jason started to react and the yetis’ confusion grew. Danny refused to move, and ultimately he would be grateful for that decision.
Between one second and the next, Jason gasped and seized before he and Danny were suddenly yanked by an unknown force through the walls of the medical room, pulled intangibly and away from the Far Frozen. Danny could barely register what was happening––his surroundings blurred from a wash of white and blue ice to the Zone’s general green and purple, his stomach dropped at the sudden velocity of their uncontrollable flight, with the only external sense he could hold onto being the feel of Jason’s hand in his. And he wasn’t about to let go, not on his half-life.
Just as Danny decided to yell Jason’s name they slowed enough for Danny to clearly see a swirling, sickly-looking portal that shook him to his core—it looked unnatural, but also nothing like his parents’ or Vlad’s portals. It was more than how it looked though…it felt wrong. Danny panicked as they got closer, as Jason was pulled nearer. “Jason!” he finally shouted, but the boy was still unconscious, a victim of whatever force summoned him. Danny could only make a single choice really, and his decision hadn’t changed since he took the young ghost’s hand seven days prior.
Danny held on and closed his eyes as they were both pulled into the vortex.
Artwork by suzukiblu
✦✦✦
Jason couldn’t breathe.
Everything—everything was green, even before he could open his eyes, and when he did they stung so badly he forced them closed again. He choked on the green, on the water slipping down his throat, into his eyes, everywhere…
‘Up, Jason! To the surface!’
The surface. He was drowning. He couldn’t breathe, his body screamed with aches and sharp pains, but his limbs, they listened. Instinct pushed his arms, cupped his hands, kicked his feet, and suddenly there it was—air. Not fresh, not at all, but air nonetheless. Jason coughed, sucked it in greedily as his legs stuttered in the vile water that enveloped him and his arms flailed over the neon surface.
Foreign hands touched him, began pulling him through the water, and Jason couldn’t bring himself to resist even as something within him screamed at him to shove them away, fight, tear, hurt them, escape—the only scream that could escape emerged as a mix of a groan and a growl. The hands lifted him from the waters but did nothing to stop his body’s collapse onto solid, dirty ground.
He coughed and heaved, dust from the ground beneath his cheek entering his lungs and not helping things at all. Jason opened his eyes fully and instinct had him analyzing his surroundings, noting the greenish tinge of his vision with unease, but also a strange rush of familiarity?
He couldn’t see much at first, with the people whose hands had lifted him from the waters surrounding him still. He took in their tightly tied black robes, masked heads, and glinting weapons. One of them stepped closer, and in an instant Jason’s leg swept underneath theirs, toppling them—the move set off the others, who drew their various weapons and entered into defensive stances. Jason bared his teeth at them and growled thoughtlessly, the green intensifying and something hot in his chest burning.
“Prepare yourselves,” a feminine voice drawled, but Jason couldn’t see from where exactly.
The burning, the fire… the rage made him not care.
‘Jason?’
The one he had toppled had returned to their feet, and made another motion to step closer. Jason’s heel met their chest and they went flying, knocking over three others like bowling pins. A hand grabbed his shoulder, and the arm attached to it broke under Jason’s own fists. A knife stabbed toward his shoulder, but Jason ducked down into a tackle that sent him and another shadowy assailant tumbling.
‘Jason!’
His mind became a blur. Jason barely registered his own movements, with only remembrances of his training and echoes of his alley brawling flashing in his mind. They became meshed with present-time snapshots of weapons and limbs and unmoving bodies.
‘JASON—STOP!’
In an instant, the burning rage snuffed out of existence and a chill swept through him. It allowed one of the few left fighting to land a hit to his side, but the pain wasn’t what sent him to the ground and into a hunched, trembling squat. The wash of cold swept through his limbs, to his fingers and his toes, and finally to his head and his eyes; the green receded until there was only a hint of it left, and after a few moments Jason realized what remained was simply the unnatural neon glow of the waters he had emerged from moments before.
“Interesting…” the woman’s voice said into the silence of the room—his assailants had stopped the moment he had crumbled to the ground. “It was shorter than I expected.” Jason heard footsteps approaching, but he didn’t dare look up, his eyes having gotten locked on the bloody dirt and gruesomely-bent leg of the person that lay sprawled before him.
‘Jason?’ a different voice whispered, echoing through his mind, which made Jason flinch. ‘Can you hear me?’
The footsteps slowed but also entered Jason’s narrowed vision, stepping irreverently over the body he couldn’t look away from—the body whose chest he couldn’t bring himself to look at to check for signs of life.
What had he done? What had happened to him? What had he… he had been dead. He thought he remembered… oh god, what…
“Stand.”
Jason’s fingernails dug into the soft, bloody palms of his hands. He trembled in shock, and he didn’t resist when fingers under his chin gently guided him to his feet. His eyes looked at the woman finally, and he recognized her.
She must have seen it in his eyes, too, and although her expression remained stern her brow line softened minutely. “There you are,” she said. “I see it worked as I hoped.”
“What did you do to me?” Jason asked, his voice wavering but also emerging in an unexpectedly deep timbre. As a matter of fact… his eyeline was level with hers, and he knew that was not the case when he last encountered the Daughter of the Demon, Talia al Ghul.
“The Lazarus Pit has restored your mind and body, child. The madness it incurs has run its course,” Talia declared, then her lip curled slightly, “despite my father’s misgivings. Speaking of—” Talia released his chin to take a hold of his upper arm, “—follow me, quickly.”
Jason stumbled after her, vaguely registering the remaining attackers—assassins, he realized—slipping ahead and behind them into the shadows as they left the roughly-hewn chamber housing the glowing Lazarus Pit. As they left the bodies of the assassins he had decimated; did any of them still live? The blood on his hands, his face, his torso… thoughts of it stoked the flickerings of that burning sensation within him.
‘Jason?’ the other voice spoke in his mind again and Jason almost tripped. Was this the madness Talia spoke of? If it was, it did still lurk within him… ‘No, Jason, it’s me, Phantom. Do you remember me? The Ghost Zone?’
This time Jason didn’t almost trip, but he did completely halt in his tracks, forcing Talia to as well. She shot a glare at Jason, but he ignored it—his mind was overrun by an influx of memories.
Jason died. He pushed back the swinging crowbar, the flash of the explosion and the agony of suffocating as fast as he could, but then he remembered—a world of greens and purples, of rare and impossible first edition novels, of ghosts and lairs and haunts and flights and fights and—Phantom. The King of Ghosts, of the Infinite Realms, and… Jason’s friend.
‘Danny?’ he thought in response.
The voice made what sounded like a sigh. ‘Thank the Ancients! I’m with you, Jason, I’m here. I don’t know how but I promise you, I’m here.’
“Jason?” Talia questioned, looking uncharacteristically wary. The shadows flickered behind her as her assassins shifted their weight. He blinked, focusing, and Jason noticed a slight green glow fading, leaving the dimly-lit hall even darker. He did not reply, but Talia simply noted his return to awareness and continued pulling him along.
They traversed the maze of halls and passageways so randomly that Jason couldn’t even begin to try and track their path away from the Lazarus Pit––not that he wanted to return. Eventually they began to encounter persons other than the dark-robed assassins, who Jason could only infer to be servants within the League of Assassins, judging by their deference to Talia’s passing presence.
“What is this place?” Jason asked before he could think better of it, but Talia did not answer. It was a silly question anyway—this was obviously a base for the League, likely built around the Lazarus Pit, and the exact location was unlikely to be shared with him at all. It also was largely underground, if not completely, but their path did gradually incline upwards.
‘The League of Assassins?’ Phantom’s voice, although entirely metaphysical, sounded strangled and a little incredulous. ‘And you know this creepy lady?’
Jason didn’t get a chance to mentally respond as Talia pulled him through a large doorway at last into an echoing room, and Jason’s stomach dropped at who he saw inside—The Demon Head himself, Ra’s al Ghul. He resisted entering further, but Talia’s grip remained ironclad on his bicep.
When Ra’s caught sight of them both fury overtook his face and he stood from where he had previously been reclining comfortably. “What have you done, Talia?” he bellowed.
“Proved you wrong,” Talia replied cooly. “The Pit has restored his mind and faculties, with a shorter period of madness than even you typically endure.”
“You foolish, imprudent—”
“You wished to know the circumstances of his condition, Father,” she cut him off, then pushed Jason forward. “You may ask him now.”
Jason felt a sudden wave of betrayal, though he knew he shouldn’t—this was Talia al Ghul; the only people she truly cared for were herself, her father, and (debatedly) her beloved Batman, Bruce Wayne.
Ra’s indeed looked more contemplative now, scanning Jason head to toe. ‘I hate this guy already,’ Phantom commented in his mind.
‘Good instincts,’ Jason thought back, then almost startled when Ra’s eyes snapped up to his own and the old man stepped closer.
“Jason Todd,” Ra’s intoned, then corrected, “Jason Todd-Wayne. Tell me… why has the Detective spurned you in such a vulnerable state, claiming you have died?”
“What?” Jason didn’t understand. He had died.
Ra’s’ annoyance grew. “Bruce Wayne left his catatonic son to fend for himself on the streets of Gotham. Why? What was his reason, his game?”
“I—I don’t remember that,” Jason hesitantly answered, clenching his fists again—it hurt, and possibly created bloody crescents in his palms, but his hands were already so bloody he couldn’t discern his own from the others’ by mere touch. So the League had found him, just wandering the streets? “I can’t—I don’t—I was hurt…”
“Yes, yes, the state of your body suggested that well enough,” Ra’s said curtly. “Answer me fully, boy!”
Something sparked. “I died!” Jason roared, his vision shifting to green again, the rage within him resurging and overtaking any stuttering panic about rapidly losing his sense of control. “I was dead! I was killed! I—I was—”
‘You were with me, Jason,’ Phantom interjected, and a wash of coolness flowed through him, slowly tempering his flame of desperate anger. ‘You died, yes, but you weren’t alone for long, and you won’t be again,’ the King of Ghosts soothed.
Ra’s seemed unmoved by the display of emotion. In fact, his study of Jason felt even more clinical than before. “Interesting…” he murmured, then looked behind Jason. “Daughter,” he beckoned, and Talia stepped up next to Jason once more. “Although you were hasty in your methods,” he scolded, to no outward reaction from the woman, “the true circumstances of the boy’s return can now be marginally narrowed down.”
Apparently that counted as praise, and Talia bowed respectfully in acknowledgement. “As you wished, Father.”
Ra’s narrowed his eyes. “Continue to investigate your beloved’s involvement, or the lack of it, as it seems. As for the boy…” Ra’s paused in contemplation, then turned away from them both in dismissal. “Find some usage for him, but keep him out of sight. I don’t want the Detective learning of him yet if he really is unaware his second Robin has returned.”
“As you wish,” Talia repeated, took Jason’s arm once more and hauled him from the room.
✦✦✦
Jason woke from a restless sleep. Talia had brought him to yet another room within the maze of hallways and deposited him there, leaving two shadowy acolytes outside the windowless bedroom’s door as guards. Or wardens, more likely… not that Jason had any idea where he would go if he left. At the sight of the bed in the room Jason almost collapsed into it, but a soft reminder from Phantom ushered him over to the sink that was across the sparse room as well. Jason had scrubbed roughly at the skin of his hands, his bare torso, and face—unfortunately there was no soap to make him actually feel clean of the now-dried evidence of his madness. Phantom once again prompted him, this time to stop.
When he had looked at himself in the hanging mirror, Jason’s eyes were green and not his expected blue. He also took in how much taller he was than he remembered. He looked healthier than he ever had before, and now had a tuft of white hair centered over his forehead. He turned away from the mirror afterwards, disconcerted by the changes.
‘Hey, that’s like mine!’ Phantom said, obviously trying to distract him. ‘Copycat.’
Jason chuckled half-heartedly. “At least it’s not all white, old man.”
Phantom squawked in his mind. ‘Old man? Old man?! Don’t be a hypocrite—you’ll forever be ‘kiddo’ if you don’t take that back right now!’
“Yeah, yeah, sure. I take it back,” Jason sighed. He appreciated Phantom’s efforts, but it was too much for him to come up with banter right then. He walked over to a small dresser and started digging through it, successfully finding a pair of linen pants that looked to be standard League-attire—but most importantly, they were clean.
Phantom had sensed his tiredness and fell silent as Jason had gotten into the bed, but the lingering unease about his monitored status and general current location made him struggle to get more than sporadic, shallow sleep. A furnished prison cell was still a cell. And so when he woke up to an unchanged room and no evidence of the passage of time, Jason didn’t bother to get up and instead stared blankly at the ceiling.
Interestingly enough, he could sort of sense that Phantom was sleeping still, even within his mind. In Phantom’s sleep, Jason could feel vague impressions of memories of the Ghost Zone—and being very cold, so maybe the Far Frozen?—as well as less recognizable wisps of images too.
Jason closed his eyes and focused inwards, mentally poking at the sensation of sharing his mind. After resting, it was really hitting him how strange everything really was about his current situation—he had been resurrected by his adopted father’s old flame who seemed to be planning to treat him like another one of her assassin pawns, and he had no memories since his death other than the Ghost Zone ones, which he knew were real because Phantom was somehow possessing him? Or… Jason kind of hoped he was partially possessed, and that he wasn’t just developing schizophrenia or something… They really needed to talk.
The feeling of Phantom startling made Jason flinch too. ‘Sorry, Phantom.’
‘It’s okay,’ Phantom reassured. ‘Wow, that was weird. I’ve never fallen asleep while overshadowing someone before.’
“Overshadowing?” Jason asked, sitting up.
‘Well, that’s what it feels like. But usually the person a ghost overshadows isn’t so… present as you are. And I can’t seem to leave your body, either,’ Phantom worried. ‘I don’t know what the last thing you remember from the Ghost Zone is, Jason, but you’d just told me your name when you fell into a weird coma. Your ghost core was flickering in and out of existence, according to the yetis. Then while I was holding your hand, we were tugged across the Zone through a strange portal and the next thing I knew we were in your body in that Pit.’
Jason shivered at the memory of those waters. ‘The Lazarus Pit—Talia said it causes temporary madness, but… I can still feel it. I only snapped out of the rage because of you.’
‘But you did snap out of it,’ Phantom emphasized. ‘I think those waters are some type of ectoplasm. If the madness is a side effect, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is tainted by negative emotions,’ he mused. ‘Though maybe it’s an ecto-weenie situation…’
“A what?” Jason couldn’t help but question aloud. “What did you just call me?” His vision flashed green—which soon washed away with a chill.
‘Nothing!’ Phantom insisted. ‘Silly, stupid thought, just ignore me…’ Phantom’s voice squeaked, then petered out into an awkward laugh.
“Right…”
Before Jason could continue the conversation, the door swung open without warning and he jumped to his feet. Damn, he’d almost forgotten about his minders.
But the shadowy assassins were not alone. Inexplicably they were flanking a pipsqueak of a kid—and an imperious one at that. The boy couldn’t be more than seven, maybe eight years old, yet he managed to somehow look down on Jason despite his tiny stature.
“You are Mother’s latest… preoccupation?” the boy sneered, unimpressed.
Meanwhile, Jason was still processing that there was a child standing before him, in the mysterious League of Assassins base, and that the assassins in the doorway behind him were deferring to said child. “Huh?”
“You do not appear very important at all,” the boy continued to himself, and the judgement in his scrutinous gaze was eerily familiar… Jason frowned when he remembered seeing the same expression the day before on Ra’s al Ghul. His clothing was also much finer and decorated than the guards behind him.
“Well, you look like a pretentious little peacock to me.”
The kid bristled. “I am Damian al Ghul, you imbecile, heir to the Demon’s Head and Son of the Bat.”
There was the reason for the resemblance to Ra’s then… wait, did he say—
“Son of the Bat?” Jason repeated sharply. Now that he was looking for it, the kid’s face—the eyes were green like Talia’s, and his complexion, but everything else… “As in, Batman?”
Damian scowled. “Yes, are you deaf? Mother keeps his true name from me, but that is his title. He is Grandfather’s chosen heir, and I am his, as his blood son.”
‘Did you just become a big brother?’ Phantom whispered in his mind.
Suddenly Damian rushed forward and Jason fell back on the bed in surprise, freezing as Damian’s face hovered uncomfortably close to his, maintaining intense eye contact. “What was that?” the boy demanded, making both Jason and Phantom panic.
Artwork by suzukiblu
‘Can he hear me?’ Phantom gasped.
“There!” Damian exclaimed, narrowing his eyes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jason’s voice cracked and he shoved him away. “Get away from me!”
“Answer me! Why did your eyes glow like that? Who are you? Are you a metahuman? Mother has spoken of them before—is that why she has been distracted by you?” Damian had completely abandoned his air of superiority by the last question, and his tone had evolved into almost a whining one.
Jason blinked. “I’m not a meta,” he decided to respond, having not been aware his eyes were glowing apparently whenever Phantom spoke to him, and because he didn’t want to reveal Phantom’s existence to anyone in the League. Especially this weird kid.
That didn’t appease the pipsqueak much. Damian crossed his arms. “Then what is it?”
“What is what, my darling?” Talia asked from the entryway and both boys jolted. Without their notice Jason’s assassin minders had left, and Talia leaned against the doorway with an indecipherable expression on her face as she looked between them.
Jason cast his eyes down and started mentally repeating ‘Don’t say anything, don’t say anything’ which luckily seemed to be heard by Phantom, who remained silent. In the corner of his eye he saw Damian glance back at him with a furrowed brow. Avoiding Talia’s gaze was probably useless, the brat would tell his mom anyway…
“What is his purpose, Mother?” the child asked, to Jason’s surprise. It was true, Damian had asked Jason that when he first walked in, but would he really not mention Jason’s eyes? “I have not trained with you this entire week, and that is because of him?” Damian scoffed. Jason would have glared but he didn’t want to risk Damian changing his mind.
God, just what he needed—to be indebted to a preteen.
Talia’s response was delayed, and Jason wondered how much of their conversation she had actually heard. But then she said, “Jason is to learn with you, Damian, and you shall learn from him in return.”
“What?” Jason asked, looking up to gape at her.
Damian’s reaction was just as aghast. “Him? What could he possibly teach me? He is a child.”
This time Jason did glare at the kid. “Look who’s talking, shortstack. And I’m not a child, I’m fifteen!”
“Sixteen now, dear,” Talia corrected. “It is October.”
Huh. Right. He hadn’t really bothered to keep track of the amount of time that passed while in the Ghost Zone—he’d thought it was his eternity, after all. Why keep track? Jason shook his head to refocus, but then smirked at Damian. “Even better, I’m older than I thought. And what are you, six?” he asked.
“I am eight years old!” Damian retorted indignantly.
Jason ignored him, which just annoyed the kid more. Instead he frowned at Talia and said, “I’m not gonna babysit your brat, Talia. You brought me back, but that doesn’t make me owe you shit.”
Talia raised a brow and dryly asked, “Is that so?”
“Yeah,” Jason said, standing. “I want to go home.”
Talia studied Jason for a while, and he resisted showing the nerves her gaze provoked. Eventually, without looking away from Jason she commanded, “Damian, leave us.”
“But Mother—”
“Damian,” she said, sharp this time, and the boy snapped his mouth shut. He bowed shallowly and passed her through the doorway. As he did Talia brushed her hand over his head and he slowed, leaning into it slightly, but did not stop. When he was gone Talia shut the door.
‘Uh oh,’ Phantom murmured.
‘Shush!’ Jason urged, turning his back on Talia and closing his eyes to hide the glow, even though every animal instinct within urged him not to. He tried to disguise the movement by vaulting over the bed and sitting with his back to her, as if he was being as bratty as her kid.
“Jason,” Talia began, and he felt the bed shift behind him. “You were dead. Murdered.” Jason clenched his fists. “Buried and mourned. But you returned to this world, a miracle—and then you wandered into my view.”
Jason turned to her and was surprised at the clear sorrow on her face. Was it real? “What do you mean?” he asked warily.
“By chance I was in Gotham,” Talia said. “You quite literally wandered into my view, dressed in a torn formal suit caked with dirt, your hands bleeding and eyes blank.” She must have seen Jason’s skeptical expression, as she took one of his clenched fists in one hand and used the other to brush the white tufts of hair from his forehead gently. “Fate is commanding your life in a way that I can barely fathom, Jason. But you are meant for something that only time will tell what that is.”
“And you, what? Think that ‘something’ should be babysitting your kid? Or you want to train me like one of your lackey assassins? What does your psycho daddy think about that?”
Talia frowned, lowering her hand. Her expression turned more detached, more serious. “Ra’s has left you in my care. You are lucky for your association with my Beloved, boy; your mind is restored and I defied my father’s orders by using the Pit for you.” She glanced away. “As he ordered, I will be looking into Bruce’s negligence regarding your situation. While I am gone, you will be trained alongside my son.” She faced him again. “I think that is a more than fair arrangement of your time, until my investigations bear fruit, is it not? Do you not wish to know the truth of things before returning to Gotham yourself?”
Talia’s words reminded Jason suddenly of the last time he had seen his adoptive father. He’d been so stupid going off to find his birth mother… and then in Ethiopia, he didn’t follow Batman’s orders. Bruce had already benched him back in Gotham for being too impulsive, and then he went and did the same thing, only thinking of his new mom. Sheila Haywood, just another Gotham crook—he’d been so naive, so hopeful… and it killed him. It was all his own fault…
A wave of cool washed through Jason from somewhere in his chest, reminding him of Phantom’s presence even though he didn’t say a word. At first Jason didn’t understand why, but then realized he had fallen silent for a while, Talia simply observing him. Perhaps it was a reminder to respond, or maybe Phantom wished to speak to him; Jason wasn’t sure. Either way though he needed to say something. He was surprised at the amount of patience Talia had shown him so far.
“Fine,” he said. There was some logic to Talia’s idea—Batman had drilled into him the importance of investigation and preparation, though Jason knew he wasn’t the best at keeping that in mind all the time. He could let her do the leg work and learn a few assassin moves while he was here. If he was learning alongside her own kid, he bet that he’d be getting star treatment compared to the League’s other acolytes. Yet one thing still bothered him. “But… you said you wanted me to teach the kid, and I kinda gotta agree with him—what the hell would I teach him?”
Talia smirked and stood from the bed—Jason mirrored her movements. “I’m sure you’ll think of something, fledgling,” she said. “Perhaps you can teach him how to be a Wayne.”
Jason could only huff a laugh at the absurdity of the statement. “Yeah, right,” he scoffed. “Very funny.”
Talia gestured for him to follow. “Come. This room is only temporary––another has been prepared for you.” She turned and left the room, Jason stepping behind her after a beat.
‘I don’t trust her one bit, Jason,’ Phantom spoke to him, and Jason trained his gaze on the back of Talia’s heels.
‘Me neither,’ Jason admitted. ‘But there’s not much else I can do right now except play along with whatever she wants. And I want to know what she finds out about what happened to me, and Bruce.’
Phantom hummed, but it sounded dissatisfied. ‘It’d be better if I wasn’t stuck in here,’ he griped. ‘I feel so useless.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’re here anyway,’ Jason whispered in his mind. He pictured Phantom as he looked in the Ghost Zone, remembering the encompassing feeling of safety whenever his ghost had been with the King, even amidst their tussles with the other ghosts. He still felt that—every time that icy chill rushed through him, he remembered he wasn’t alone.
‘So am I,’ Phantom whispered back. Jason felt that chill again and he fought back a smile.